You just never know what you’ll find at a yard sale, estate sale, thrift store or in an antique store. 

Sometimes, a shopper can be greatly, pleasantly surprised and make a gratifying purchase, regardless of the price … and many times, at a bargain price. 

That’s what happened to Southside’s Daniel Strange, who has long operated the Broken Spoke antique mall and an online auction, when he ventured into an Odenville (St. Clair County) store. 

“It was sitting there in plain sight, against the wall, with a small tag that said, ‘Legion Field bench, $350,’” he recalled. “I didn’t quibble, I just bought it and brought it home.” 

A bit of history: “The Old Gray Lady,” as Birmingham’s famed football stadium has been called, opened in 1927 with a capacity of about 25,000 fans. There were 16,000-plus fans to watch Samford College play Birmingham-Southern College in the first game played in the stadium in 1929. During the next 40 years, several renovations to the stadium were made, seating was expanded to 85,000 and its playing field changed from grass to artificial turf. 

According to Wikipedia: “The turf was changed back to a natural Bermuda grass surface in 1995 in order to host soccer events for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. In 2006, the field went back to an artificial surface with infilled Field Turf.” 

It is not known when the sideline bench for the home side that Strange purchased was installed at Legion Field, but all signs point to it having been there for a long, long time. From the year the stadium opened until 2000, the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide football team used Legion Field for many of its home games. There’s no telling how many tide players and coaches (including Bear Bryant) have sat on this wooden bench.    

An oddity about the bench: Someone had used a knife to engrave the words “I hate hippies” on the left end of a seat slat. “I showed the bench to John Croyle (a Gadsden native who played defensive end for the Crimson Tide in the 1970s and is founder of the Big Oak Ranches for boys and girls), and he verified that it had been on Legion Field’s sideline,” Strange said.  

The bench is a heavy one, measuring 96 inches long with its seat 20 inches (four slats) wide. The weight is estimated at 200 pounds. 

Strange bought it about 10 years ago. “The lady told me she had obtained the bench from her son who had been part of the Legion Field ... renovation some three or four years before that,” he said. “So, it must have been removed in the 2005 remodeling work.” 

Strange has a man cave/theater room with lots of Crimson Tide memorabilia displayed on its walls and in a showcase. The Legion Field bench sits majestically alongside other seats in that area. 

For this writer, it was a lifetime thrill to sit for a while on the famed bench and swap football game memories with Strange, the proud owner. 

 “Uhh, Daniel, ol’ buddy, how much will you take for the bench?” 

“It is not for sale, not now nor ever,” he responded with a huge grin.